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Why Evolution Reversed These Insects’ Sex Organs
Among these cave insects, the females evolved to have penises — twice. The reasons challenge common assumptions about sex.
Solution: ‘How Equality and Inequality Shape Birds and Bees’
Puzzle solvers explored how evolution may have used negative and positive control mechanisms to shape the conflicting parental functions of reproduction and child rearing.
How Equality and Inequality Shape the Birds and the Bees
Two dynamic, seemingly opposing forces likely played an important role in the evolution of reproduction and child rearing in social animals like bees and humans.
How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies
Evolution may have coopted an ancient metabolic mechanism to set social insects on the path toward one of the most puzzling behaviors found in nature.
A Mathematician Who Decodes the Patterns Stamped Out by Life
Corina Tarnita deciphers bizarre patterns in the soil created by competing life-forms.
Insects Conquered a Watery Realm With Just Two New Genes
Minor genetic changes can have big evolutionary consequences. When a gene duplication gave some water striders a novel leg part, it opened up a new world for them.
Moonlighting Genes Evolve for a Venomous Job
An unexpected mechanism allows wasps to rapidly co-opt genes for new toxic functions.
The Thorny Truth About Spine Evolution
A definitive explanation for why plants evolved spines remains elusive, and human biases compound the problem.
The Woman Who Stared at Wasps
The biologist Joan Strassmann discusses cooperation in social insects, how amoebas can teach us about competition, and why the definition of “organism” needs an overhaul.